Anxiety in Zimbabwe over presidential vote

Delay on election count fuels opposition fears of ballot rigging

New York Times

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Photo: PHILIMON BULAWAYO

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###Live Caption:Children play with a mask of ZimbabwePresident Robert Mugabe by the roadside in the suburb of Epworth in the capital Harare March 31, 2008. Zimbabwe's justice minister lost his seat on Monday and first election results showed the opposition level with President Robert Mugabe's party, but counting delays fuelled opposition suspicions of rigging. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo (ZIMBABWE)###Caption History:Children play with a mask of ZimbabwePresident Robert Mugabe by the roadside in the suburb of Epworth in the capital Harare March 31, 2008. Zimbabwe's justice minister lost his seat on Monday and first election results showed the opposition level with President Robert Mugabe's party, but counting delays fuelled opposition suspicions of rigging. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo (ZIMBABWE)###Notes:Children play with a mask of President Robert Mugabe by the roadside in the suburb of Epworth in the capital Harare###Special Instructions:0 less

###Live Caption:Children play with a mask of ZimbabwePresident Robert Mugabe by the roadside in the suburb of Epworth in the capital Harare March 31, 2008. Zimbabwe's justice minister lost his seat on Monday ... more

Photo: PHILIMON BULAWAYO

Anxiety in Zimbabwe over presidential vote

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Zimbabwe lingered in political limbo Monday, with its election commission staying silent on the results of Saturday's presidential election, raising additional concerns that President Robert Mugabe was intent on rigging the outcome.

As the country waited, a network of civic groups issued its own projection of how the vote will turn out, if legitimately counted. It estimated that the main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, would receive 47 to 51.8 percent, while Mugabe would get 39.2 to 44.4 percent.

That forecast, by the Zimbabwean Election Support Network, was based on a random sampling of results already posted at 435 of the 9,400 polling stations. There was a hush in the room when Noel Kututwa, the network's chairman, began his statement, which had been eagerly anticipated by civic organizations interested in a fair vote. And there was a slight gasp when he read the numbers: If no one wins a majority, a runoff will be required.

"One of the most important changes in this election was the posting of vote counts at individual polling stations," said Kututwa, suggesting that since those numbers have been made public any effort to change them would seem outlandishly crude.

Tsvangirai's party, the Movement for Democratic Change, already has used the posted results to declare victory, though its reading of the numbers is extravagant by comparison. On Monday, Tendai Biti, the party's secretary-general, said unofficial tallies of more than half the vote showed Tsvangirai with 60 percent and Mugabe with 30.

"We are at the moment of liberation from a dictator," he said.

Mugabe, 84, has led Zimbabwe since 1980. Immensely crafty and thoroughly ruthless, he is not a man likely to give up his hold of power without a fight, analysts, diplomats and Zimbabweans have long contended.

That has left this nation, and a good bit of the world, wondering how he will survive what seems a repudiation by his countrymen, most of whom have become unemployed under Mugabe's rule. The nation suffers from an inflation rate of 100,000 percent.

Monday morning at 6:30, nearly 36 hours after the polls closed, Zimbabwe's election commission began broadcasting election results in a fashion that seemed to mock the expectancy. Totals were only given for races for parliament - and then only a handful at a time. By day's end, announcements were made for only 67 of the 210 seats.

Those results split nearly evenly between candidates aligned with Mugabe and Tsvangirai, 55, a former labor leader who lost the 2002 presidential vote in a contest that many independent observers consider to have been rigged.

Among Monday's announced losers was Mugabe's justice minister, Patrick Chinamasa. And among the winners was Piniel Denga, a first-time opposition candidate from Mbare.

The White House too has noticed the delay.

"We're urging the election commission to count every vote honestly and to release results quickly that reflect the will and preferences of the people of Zimbabwe," said spokesman Tony Fratto.

For its part, the election commission has begged for patience, saying it has many votes to record in local and national contests. But for many in Zimbabwe, it is difficult to believe the slowness is not intentional. Zimbabwe seems paused at a crossroads in its history. Though most people have become destitute under Mugabe, a few have grown fabulously rich. There is a great nervousness among those who have hitched their fortunes to an aged autocrat.

Heidi Holland, a writer who recently published a biography of the president called "Dinner with Mugabe," said in a phone interview that the delay fits a familiar and ominous pattern: "There's no way the key older military people will support" the opposition "against Mugabe."

But this also may be a time of shifting loyalties, of supporters from one side putting out feelers to the other. Martin Meredith, another biographer of Mugabe, said that although the president will steal the election if he can, it is not certain that he has complete control over the apparatus of power, from the military to the intelligence agency.

Meredith, contacted via phone, recalled that Mugabe, once a guerrilla leader, retained some of his most bitter enemies after taking power, including a head of the secret police who had spent considerable effort trying to assassinate him.

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Whatever those in government are planning behind closed doors, a good number of furtive discussions are also going on among those church and civic groups that intend to protest in the streets in the event the election is deemed a heist.

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